Beautiful
by cydduquettegmail.com
Summary: The Wicked Witch of the West- or more, the misunderstood Elphaba, is on the run with her lover Fiyero, escaping Oz being their only goal. But where to go, out of Oz? And what lies before them? Is their leaving for Good? Behold their son, Erik; lover of trap-doors, and see how he eventually takes his life into his own hands and reaches the Point of No eturn.


Elphaba

And for a moment, I was in Oz. And then I wasn't.

I was nowhere.

The first thing I sensed, or more, lost sense of, was smell. The deepest cellar of the castle Kiamo Ko, where the Veil had been thin enough for Fiyero and I to escape the tyranny of Oz to Anotherworld, had smelled of fish from the fishwell and mildews. But as soon as we entered the dark hole and our feet left the ground, I smelled nothing. I then lost the sound of the Ozian guards, ransacking my home for propagandous objects to prove my wickedness, but they would find nothing. I couldn't see anything, couldn't feel- except for Fiyero's hand, clutched tightly to mine. But that was all. I tried to move forward, backward, anywhere, I clawed at nothing; desperate to find my way out of the liquidated brightness that was the Inbetween, the area inside the Veil. It was never ending and timeless. And I couldn't get out.

I felt something pull at my arm, and even though I couldn't see him, I knew it was Fiyero. I found myself being dragged up, through the Inbetween, where he must've felt a place where the Veil had broken, just like it had in the Kiamo Ko's cellar in Oz. My eyes were filled with darkness as he pulled me out of the break, onto a solid rocky ground, surrounded in blackness.

We were quiet for a long time.

"We're alive," Fiyero breathed, "Elphie, we made it out of Oz."

"But where are we?" I whispered, turning in all directions, seeing nothing, "I can't see anything, I don't know where we are, Fiyero-"

"We're together," he whispered back to me, grabbing me around the waist and pulling me close, "and that's all I need,"

"Fiyero, be serious for once," I flirted to him, smiling and kissing him in the darkness.

"Ah. You know I hate doing that. Must I really, my sweet Elphie? My darling?"

"Your sweet? I am never sweet," I retorted, pulling away from him, "we need light." I spread my fingers, and tiny tendrils of white sparks grew up from my palms, moving in a sort of extraordinary dance and meeting in the middle, forming a raw ball of light that illuminated the entire area.

It was small and sparse; rocky and cavern-like, only with no clear exit. Little noises, few smells and no light. Near us was a huge, ominous black lake that stretched out to where we could not see the end; hundreds of small fish could be heard splashing at the surface. Mosses grew around are feet in tiny patches.

"Oh, Fiyero," I half moaned, "what have I brought us to?"

"Not sure," he admitted, kicking a loose stone towards the lake, "looks pretty abandon, and-"

This somehow sent me over he edge, "Fiyero," I whispered feverishly, "it's all _water._ I _cannot_ touch water. We can't be here, I can't live here- Look-" A deep, instinctive panic filled mu voice, "where we are- Where I've brought us- We can't live here- You deserve better-"

"Hush, Falba," He murmured, "we're safe. We couldn't live in Oz, where you were hunted and I was a traitor,"

"But there's….no food here! Nothing to sleep on! Nothing to do! How can we live-?"

"There's fish in that lake, there's a ground beneath our feet. These mosses are everywhere, and they can provide air. We'll be happy here, happier than in Oz. Nobody can hurt us anymore,"

I looked at him, his deeply sunken eyes that still has that straw-like quality to them that had worn off with time, "We really can never go back, can we?" I asked, the unspeakable question.

"Never. We could never be happy there. We could never be together."

"I love you, Yero my Hero."

"I love you much much more, my darling Elphaba."

He held me until we fell asleep, and we slept on rocks, because we had nothing else.

Fiyero made me breakfasts of fish every morning before I woke, then held me again so I would do so in his arms. He combed my hair with his fingers, washed my dress every other day, fixed holes in it with a fishes' bone-needle and a string from his own shirt. He made love to me passionately, in a way that I was comfortable and not taken advantage of, and only did so once he asked me first. He was diligent, optimistic. I could ask for nothing more, because he did it all for me.

And for the time, I lived in an ultimate fantasy. A constant honeymoon, he joked, but then I pointed out we never married. We did so the next day, with him slipping the simple gold ring he always wore onto my trembling finger as we vowed to never leave each other. I fashioned him a ring from a pebble I magicked to fit his finger.

Neither one of us even remembered that the ring I wore now he received from his forced engagement to Glinda. It didn't matter now; Glinda and Oz and the cruelty was all Anotherworld away.

But then it all crashed down on me.

I missed a period; shrugged it off. It was nothing. Nothing was different.

Another.

I became terrified, but for reasons I could not articulate. I couldn't be pregnant, no, this could _not_ happen. Not to me. I could never raise a child- _a child with green skin_. It would be a curse to keep it. I knew I shouldn't have felt this way; Fiyero would be overjoyed; but I couldn't tell him. I didn't, until he finally realized from the growing bulge at the base of my stomach, my lack of sex.

Our fight shook the lake's water.

 _WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME?_ He wanted to know. I didn't answer in words, just screams, trying to drown in my own voice.

He grabbed me, not forcefully, just grabbed me and looked deeper into my eyes. _Elphaba,_ he kept yelling, _Why didn't you say? Why can't you tell me?_

"I can't keep it! I won't! I'll hate it, it'll hate me!" I screamed over and over.

I shook harder, trying to free from his grasp, but he was too strong and yet it didn't hurt in any way.

"Fiyero, let me go!" I tried to tell him, but I was drowning in my own voice, until I broke free from his grasp, and ran blinded by tears. Blindly, into the lake.

I don't know whose voice was loudest- Fiyero's, mine, or my unborn child's; all I knew was that we all were screaming. The pain, the pain of a thousand white-hot daggers slicing my body and then being filled with ice, salt, and then another round of daggers pierced my every inch, rocking my body and weighing me down. I couldn't control the sounds issuing from my soul that escaped through my lips, and I couldn't understand even the pain, which subsided to paralyzing numbness when I finally realized Fiyero had dragged me from my watery tortures. I looked at him from my place in his arm; he held me so tight.

"Baptism," I whispered, "is not meant for the soulless."

He breathed into my hair, his hands clenched in fists around my middle, protecting where the baby was. Our baby.

 _The_ baby _with green skin._

But I could change it.

"I'll keep it," I finally said, before drifting off in his arms.


End file.
